Basra: What the f*** are we doing here?

[muriel_volestrangler]

Yes, that's the real title The Times in London used, for this piece by Matthew Parris (a surprisingly sane person, given he's a writer for Murdoch, and an ex-Conservative MP). Only available on their site to UK readers, I'm afraid: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-7-1056784,00.html
the nearest I can get for the rest of you is this bulletin board (and even that was unavailable when I tried it, so I'm giving the Google cache too):
http://lists.iskra.net/pipermail/yatw-discuss/2004-April/001531.html
http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:-YdvDjfiSKoJ:lists.iskra.net/pipermail/yatw-discuss/2004-April/001531.html+%22matthew+parris%22+train+basra&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

It was published on March 31st - note the first paragraph I quote. An account of the train journey from Baghdad to Basra, and then the city.

There is far less to show for a year’s occupation than there should be, and if our (undoubted) attempts to make friends with the locals seem to have brought peace, then that will be because their Shia leaders have yet to stir the mob against us. Bigger forces are at work than can be tamed with a handshake, and all that goodwill could disappear in a puff of smoke.
...
Back in the British green zone that afternoon I passed the checkpoint of British squaddies (“The Times, sir? That’s the intellectual one, innit?”) and met up with some journalists and press officers who were in Basra on a visit sponsored by the Department for International Development. Except that they were not in Basra. They were in a heavily guarded park, sprinkled with tawdry mansions and occupied by the British, whither they had been brought from the airport. Allowed a couple of guided excursions to see a generator and a sewage plant, they asked me what the real Basra was like. “We were told we could not go there, for security reasons, one told me.”
...
He and his heavily-armed crew waved to Iraqis on the shore. They did this so often that I realised they must be under orders to wave whenever possible.

As we sped under a bridge our gunman trained his weapon on the pedestrians passing above, just in case, then swivelled quickly round to do the same from behind as we emerged from under the bridge. Meanwhile, his colleagues just kept waving, frantically. It sort of summed things up.

[Demeter]

1. Dying the Death of 1000 Cuts